Merwin, W. S.

Merwin, W. S. (William Stanley Merwin), 1927–, American poet and translator, b. New York City. After graduating from Princeton in 1948, he traveled in Europe, working as a tutor and studying romance languages, a period described many years later in his memoir Summer Doorways (2005). He has lived in Hawaii since 1976. Merwin is noted for his restrained, spare, sometimes remote, often elegiac, and always finely wrought verse. His poetry frequently focuses on nature and the human response to it as well as on memory and mortality. It embodies a contemplative engagement with myth and religious vision and often expresses an overwhelming sense of loss. His many volumes of poetry include A Mask for Janus (1952), The Moving Target (1963), Lice (1967), The Carrier of Ladders (1970 Pulitzer Prize), Opening the Hand (1983), Selected Poems (1988), Travels (1993), The River Sound (1999), The Pupil (2002), and The Shadow of Sirius (2009 Pulitzer Prize). Merwin is also well known for his translations, among them The Cid (1959) and The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (1962). He was named poet laureate of the United States in 2010.